


The Same

by Mjazilem



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: 12 Monkeys Theme Week, Drabble, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e04 Atari, Extended Scene, Theme Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 19:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3702973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mjazilem/pseuds/Mjazilem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monday Night the West VII camp. Max's thoughts about Cole as he's unconscious and Deacon is making a decision about how to deal with their captive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same

He looked the same and that made her mad.

Max paced in the tent where he was tied up and unconscious laying in the dirt where the men had unceremoniously dropped him. She glared at his still form. She was angry and every glance at him was a stab to her gut. He was the same. Deacon wasn't lying when he said 'the years hadn't changed Cole a bit.'

Sure his hair was a bit longer but it wasn't really different. It hung in his face the same way it had when she'd watched over him while he took his shift sleeping years ago. 

She'd had dreams back then about sleeping by his side, he would curl around her protectively and hold her tight and in her dreams they slept safe together. 

Her dreams had changed since he'd left. She'd had years to fantasize about what happened to him and Ramse after they left the VII, after he'd left her. 

In the dead of night in her tent alone when she had time to let her mind wonder she would come up with ideas about what happened to Cole. Depending on her mood and how bad her day had gone he would either be starving to death hold up in a some tumble down hovel with no hope or a head on a pike, stupid hair blowing in the wind, flesh rotting in the sun to scare off scavs.

She often imagined him dying bleeding out from various wounds with no one to sew them up for him, because what would he ever do 'without her.'

Max shook her head, growling in frustration at the old fantasy, it was stupid and unrealistic. Over the years she'd become more and more convinced that she never mattered to him. That's why it was so easy for him to leave that night. She'd been a good lay but not good enough to keep. Cole had picked Ramse over her and Ramse had sewn up Cole plenty of times before Max took over the job. She'd seen the scars Ramse was good at sewing small evenly spaced stitches.

He didn't need her, he never did.

Of course Cole wouldn't change. He was the only bastard she'd been dumb enough to let get close enough to hurt her and he didn't even have the decency to come back into her life looking malnourished or crazied or mangled.

Damn him, he had the nerve to look positively well fed, by scav terms.

She wasn't surprised he was alive. Cole always was a surviver. 

He had never talked about himself much. But she knew that he and Ramse had survived some rough shit before joining the VII. It really wasn't hard to believe that after they ran Cole hadn't been killed. In the back of her mind she knew he was out there surviving.

On good days when a little glimmer of romance invaded her fantasies she had envisioned him strong and happy. Sometimes she pictured him down south maybe in Florida warm and safe. Sometimes she imagined he was hold up in the woods just outside of camp waiting for the right time to come back for her.

She shook that memory from her head too, she didn't have time for sentimentality and all BS Cole's presence was bring up.

She was angry at him and she wasn't ready to let go of that just because he was helpless at her feet. 

She'd just as soon kill him as look at him for what he did to her. She looked back at him over her shoulder as she continued pacing. She was waiting for Deacon's orders in regards to what to do with Cole, just waiting for the go ahead to get her hands on him. 

She hadn't touched him except with the stock of her gun when she'd first come across him. She wasn't sure if she really wanted to touch him. Touching Cole now would make this real and not just another fantasy.

She probably could now if she wanted. There was no one around, Deacon wouldn't know. 

There was no one to stop her from sticking her knife in his guts. Nothing stopping her from putting her hands around his throat and squeezing off his air. There was no one to stop her from brushing the hair out of him face or moving his arm out from under him so it didn't cramp up and agitate the old shoulder injury that used to give him trouble.

Her hands itched to get closer. She thought about it but she didn't move.

He'd made the decision a long time ago that he didn't need her help and that like the rest of him probably hadn't changed.


End file.
